Individualism: Gil Evans in the 1960s
Posted in Shows on Jun 2nd, 2008
Gil Evans, a Canadian-born pianist and composer, “enormously expanded the vocabulary of the jazz orchestra,” as writer Gene Lees pointed out, reducing the standard big-band instrumentation, restraining its vibrato, and adding flutes, oboes, English and French horns, and tubas. Self-taught as an arranger, he created a quietly dramatic, dark-hued sound-world that drew on a multiplicity of influences ranging from Spanish music and the French Impressionists to Duke Ellington and…
Some previous Night Lights shows from the 
George Gershwin’s opera Porgy and Bess met with only middling success when it debuted in 1935, but stagings in the 1940s and 1950s ensured its place in musical history. With Hollywood poised to make…
Jazz artists have occasionally revisited albums years or decades after their original release, sometimes rerecording them in their entirety. Often this has been done to take advantage…
